Cinema Notes From All Over (Deceit of the Crime Division)

CELLULOIDLAND, The Universe - I Love You Philip Morris is not, alas, a film about a shrinking sect of smokers with a passionate fealty to a large tobacco conglomerate who rebelliously use machetes to hack off the hands of the antismoking fanatics who fan those hands in front of their own scrunched-up noses to signal their disdain for cigarettes, cigarette smoke, free will, responsible choice, and anything else that gets in the way of their desire to dictate to others how they should live.  
   Instead, it is a romantic comedy-drama (a "comma"?) about a pair of gay guys. Steven Russell, played by Jim Carrey, is an incorrigible con man. Phillip Morris, played by Ewan MacGregor, is a trusting Southern soul. The two meet and fall in love in prison, where each is serving time for something or other. (Who, in the end, cares why they're behind bars? Life is short; we're all going to die someday. Tracking details of this or that movie's plot is, you might agree, simply too exhausting.) 

   The film is sweet and mildly enjoyable, excepting a scene which for First of All sabotaged the whole thing. 
   In it, Mr. Russell appears to be dying of AIDS. In a wrenching phone call, Mr. Morris, though angry with Mr. Russell for other reasons, sobs wildly when he learns of his lover's illness. For those of us who lost friends to AIDS in the eighties and nineties, the scene is a knife to the heart. 
   Later, it is revealed that Mr. Russell's "illness" was faked. It is another con, one that allows Mr. Russell, posing as a lawyer, to try to spring Mr. Morris from prison. 
   (Oops. Did we spoil the film for you? So sorry.)
   For the AIDS scene to work, the audience must feel Mr. Morris' agony. So the film tricks us in the same way that Mr. Russell tricks Mr. Morris. When the con is exposed we feel Mr. Morris' rage--he slaps Mr. Russell's face--and his exasperation with Mr. Russell's iniquitous duplicity. 
   First of All understands this filmic conceit. You know what? First of All does not care. It is a terrible manipulation of the audience. We found ourselves weeping at Mr. Morris' pain; we recalled our own in the same kinds of situations. So for the illness to be exposed as fake--well, for hours after leaving the theater we boiled at the film's aggressive guile. 
   In fairness, we note that the film is based on true events. Perhaps Mr. Russell's AIDS con did, in fact, happen.
   Still.   


   A side note: Mr. Morris and Mr. Russell's relationship does not last. In this sense theirs is no different from many nongay couplings. Love, sad to say, does not conquer all. Gays and lesbians eager to marry, in prison our out, need take note.
   
   

Love is All Around (Gay/Lesbian Relationship Breakups Division)

SAN FRANCISCO, Ca. – A workshop is being offered here to provide guidance to lesbian and gay couples whose relationships are ending, and not a moment too soon, if organizers are to be believed, and why shouldn't they be? They, after all, are the experts.

  The Bay Area Reporter, a free weekly newspaper (“Serving the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities since 1971”), noted in a May 6 piece that the first session of the two-part course was Friday (May 8). The second will be Saturday, June 5.

 The appealingly named Judy Appel, the executive director of Our Family Coalition, the coordinating organization, told the paper, “Our families, like all families, go through all the same cycles of meeting and getting together and having relationships, and unfortunately, sometimes breaking up.”

  She added, referring to mismatched state laws regarding same-gender marriage and domestic partnerships, “There’s [sic] definitely complicating factors that heterosexual couples don’t have to think about. … We have to work so hard to build recognition of our relationships that sometimes we’re reluctant to talk about the breakups.”

  This is true. Heterosexuals, who allegedly revere the state of holy matrimony, have made it easy on themselves to get out of it. Gays and lesbians eager for the day when same-gender marriage spreads across the land need take note.

  (And if their relationships are crumbling, they can visit www.ourfamily.org, a URL for which we would create a hyperlink if hyperlinks didn’t disappear with dispiriting regularity from this blog, something about which the good folks at Google have some explaining to do.)

The Joys of Holy Matrimony (Lesbian Boobies Division)

SWANSEA, Wales - A Swansea woman named Sharon Hancox, forty, spent her first night of wedded bliss in the slammer, but not for marrying her lesbian partner, Nicola Hutin, also forty. 
  Indeed, Swansea apparently is so sophisticated that a lesbian wedding occasions the batting of nary a local eye. 
 What troubled authorities, according to a March 23 report in Metro, a free United Kingdom weekly, forwarded to us by an Oxford, UK spy, is that immediately after the happy nuptials Ms. Hancox took it upon herself to drink eight pints of lager at the reception, held at a bar called Champers. Thereafter, she and her betrothed displayed a disquieting sort of aggression, or, in lay terms, acted like drunken idiots. 
  (In the United Kingdom, "champers" is short for champagne, although plainly Ms. Hancox is more of a lager kind of gal.)

  First, Ms. Hutin exchanged punches with an inebriated woman. 
  (Metro repoter Joel Taylor writes that Ms. Hutin was in "a fight." Perhaps, then, we are embellishing slightly. It is an unfair generalization that fighting lesbians ipso facto throw punches, although it does create a pleasing mental image.) 
  A bar security man named David Jenkins broke up the fight, and asked the entire wedding party to leave the bar. 
  At that point, Ms. Hancox confronted Mr. Jenkins. Apparently a Champers regular, she accused Mr. Jenkins of having "attacked" her in the past. 
  "You assaulted me, you pulled my tits out two years ago," is the elegant way Ms. Hancox is reported to have put it. 
  She then allegedly pulled down her red dress top, exposing her mammaries. This could be considered a  service to boob-hounds the world over, but apparently is not the sort of thing that flies in Swansea. 
  As it happens, things didn't end there. Ms. Hutin lunged at Mr. Jenkins at about the same moment that Ms. Hancox swung her stiletto heel at him. Whatever else may be said about them, it seems safe to say that Ms. Hancox and Ms. Hutin sure know how to party. 
  Referring to the stiletto incident when speaking later to Swansea magistrates, and using the affectless language typical of verbal and written communication in the legal system, a prosecutor named Julie Sullivan said, "The heel made contact with his [Jenkins'] forehead and he felt blood running down his face." 
  Ms. Hancox admitted common assault and received a yearlong community-service order. She is also required to pay a costs totaling two hundred and fifty British pounds.
  Two things need to be noted. 
  First, Mr. Taylor's Metro report is admirably urbane: never once does he raise an eyebrow at the notion of a lesbian wedding. And the story's copyeditor must be applauded for creating this alluringly alliterative headline: "Bride bares breasts and bashes bouncer."

   Second, the holy institution of matrimony has expanded, at least in Swansea, to include so-called alternative couples. Ms. Hancox and Ms. Hutin are to be commended for showing that gays and lesbians are just like heterosexuals, at least when it comes to getting trashed at wedding receptions, attacking bouncers, and winding up in the can. 

  Gays and lesbians keen to marry need pay close attention. 


  On a side note, the name Swansea is unbearably charming. It conjures images of swans, the sea, and swans at sea, although were it the case that swans went to sea it is possible that seagulls ("gulls at sea"), furiously jealous of the beautiful airborne interlopers, would peck them to death.
  This would be a gruesome sight, but it might make a droll YouTube video. 
   Imagine our disenchantment, then, when we consulted Wikipedia - the lazy man's research resource -  and discovered that the town's name is pronounced SWON-zee, a sound closer to that of a sneeze than of a hissing sea and screaming mutilated swans. 

The Joys of Holy Matrimony (My Husband The Pimp Division)

ROCKFORD, Minn., March 20 -- A local man named Clinton Danner was arrested at a Chicago hotel Sunday after authorities learned he was prostituting his wife via Craigslist ads, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.
   His wife, whom the AP didn't name, told authorities that Mr. Danner would arrange the encounters, after the completion of which she was expected to deposit her earnings into his bank account. She said her husband told ther that if she failed to comply with his scheme, she would never see their young son again. 
   Mr. Danner, who is thirty-two, faces a felony charge of pandering. He is being held on a $150,000 bond.
   People like Mr. Danner are examples of why heterosexual marriage should come under strict review, and sooner rather than later. Obviously, some straights can't handle their allegedly beloved institution of matrimony. And yet they deem it prudent to legislatively "protect" it from same-gender couples who love and cherish each other. 
   Gays and lesbians pressing for the opportunity to marry need pay attention. 
   

Queer Notes from All Over (AZ. Politician Says Same-Gender Marriage = Horse Love)

SOMEWHERE IN ARIZONA, Arizona, March 18 -- A former six-term Arizona congressman (1994-2006) said recently that the November 2003 Massachusetts Judicial Supreme Court decision allowing same-gender marriage could lead to a man being legally allowed to marry his horse, Huffington Post blogger Sam Stein noted Monday. 

   The apparently very strange man, who is named J.D. Hayworth, has unfairly overlooked all kinds of animals, and this is sad. One would, if one could, marry one's cat, Comma, but only, one admits, for the tax breaks and the veterinary hospital visitation rights. 

  Perhaps, to be fair, Hayworth agrees. Stein quoted the Orlando radio station WORL as quoting Hayworth. Do you see? It's like a game of telephone. It is possible that Hayworth originally said "man-cat marriage," and a WORL reporter, one who favors horses, changed the quote. It's hard to say.

   Either way, Hayworth said, according to Stein---->WORL, that in its decision, the Mass. Supreme Court defined marriage as "now get this - it defined marriage as simply, quote, 'the establishment of intimacy.'"


          "The Voluntary Union Of"


   The HuffPo's Stein points out in a followup piece there is no such provision in the decision, which defines marriage as "the voluntary union of spouses, to the exclusion of all others." 
   When MSNBC talk show host Rachel Maddow asked Hayworth about the discrepancy the next day, he said, "You and I can have a disagreement about that," and closed down the interview - not a response to inspire confidence in the man's confidence in his comments. 
    Intimacy, voluntary union of spouses - feh. These are mere details, and Hayworth, like all politicians and crazy people (redundancy), wasn't about to let them stand in the way of a good barnyard yarn the day he spoke to WORL. 

   "I mean," he went on, "I don't mean to be absurd about it, but I guess I can make the point of absurdity with an absurd point - I guess that would mean if you really had affection for your horse, I guess you could marry your horse."

   This is a syllogism long favored by far-rightist lawmakers and religionists eager to demonize homosexuals. They link homosexuality with pedophilia, incest and bestiality ("I guess you could marry your horse"). Of course, homosexuality - and its open-hearted manifestation, gay and lesbianism - has naught to do with any of those categories. 
   Hayworth concluded: "It's the wrong way to go, and the only way to protect the institution of marriage is with that federal amendment that I support." 
   It should be noted that Hayworth, a Republican, is challenging John McCain for his Senate seat. The comments, then, were uttered in the context of an Arizona political campaign, and are therefore calculated to harm Hayworth's opponent. By saying he "supports" marriage legislation, Hayworth corners McCain: if the sitting Senator does not say he "supports" marriage legislation - in this case in the form of a constitutional amendment legislatively defining marriage, a loathsome concept to some who revere the Constitution in its present, quite workable form - he stands to lose votes on the right-wing fringe. 


    Statement Clarified Comments? No


   Hayworth released a statement the following day clarifying his man-horse-nuptials comments. Oh, wait: no he didn't. He issued a statement standing by the comments, and he did it using every cliched talking point from the Republican playbook. The statement is a case study in the calculated uses of repetition and coded language. Orwell would be proud. Let's have a look. (Cliches are in bold, translation in italics.)
   "[S]adly, the liberal media [Rachel Maddow is a dyke] intent on defending the ultra-leftist, progressive [caring] politicians in Massachusetts [gay], are attacking me [I am running for the Senate] for standing up [I am running for the Senate] once again for family values [vote for me] and for rejecting this absurd court ruling. 
   "But they don't intimidate me at all. [My campaign chest runneth over.] I know right from wrong [I plan to win] and as a staunch defender of marriage [politician who needs votes] I know I can count of millions of supporters [voters] across America [Arizona] to stand with me [vote for me] when our values are under attack [I am down in the polls] and when I am under attack [I am down in the polls] for standing up [I am running for the Senate] to defend those values [hustle for votes]."
   The tally: 
   *Liberal media - 1
   *Ultra-leftist, progressive - 1
   *Attacking me/under attack - 3
   *Values - 3
   *Standing (up, with me, etc.) - 3
   So you see, repetition gets a message across. And Hayworth, a craven nacissist, knows that. Hayworth, a craven narcissist, knows that. Hayworth, a craven narcissist, knows that.


           Knowledge is Power

   Back, for a moment, to the man-horse business. One idly wonders why far-rightist heterosexual lawmakers and religionists show such a wide-ranging and intimate knowledge of pedophilia, incest and bestiality. Is it because these are the hallmarks of the "family unit," which these lawmakers and God-talkers so deeply revere? Alas, we shall never know. 

   One is less surprised at talk of a Constitutional "marriage" amendment. Heterosexuals evidently have so little faith in the institution of marriage that some feel the need to legislate "protection" of it. This does not inspire a deep sense of trust either in them or in their hallowed tradition. 

   Gays and lesbians enthused about getting hitched should take note. 

The Joys of Holy Matrimony (Virtual Weaning Division)

SEOUL, Korea, March 5 - After nearly six months on the run, a Korean couple was arrested last week for allowing their child to die of malnutrition even as they raised a virtual child in an online game, the Associated Press reported on March 5. 
   Kim Yoo-chul, forty-one, and Choi Mi-Sun, twenty-five, became unreasonably mesmerized by an online game known as Prius. (This is not to be confused with the automobile of the same name, which, although it saves on gas money and protects the environment, has been shown to have a questionable braking system, and therefore tends to smash into things with alarming regularity.)
   The AP wrote: "The pair were obsessed with raising their internet child, called Anima, resulting in the neglect of their unnamed real daughter." 
   A Korean police officer told the local press that the couple, jobless and dispirited over having given birth to the baby prematurely, only fed the child - the barely living, barely breathing one, that is - when not at an Inter-nets cafe engaging in twelve-hour online gaming sessions. 
   "Online game addiction can blur the line between reality and the virtual world," Professor Kwak Dae-kyung, of Dongguk University, in Seoul, told the local press, and one is hard-pressed not to believe him: after all, as they say, if it waddles, swims and Kwaks like a Dae-kyung, then it probably is a Dae-kyung.
   Child-rearing is a blessed past-time, and is just one of the many delights of holy matrimony, an institution in which some heterosexuals have so little confidence that they feel the need to legislatively protect it. 
   Gays and lesbians eager to tie the knot ought to take note. 

The Joys of Holy Matrimony (Sharpest Blade in the Drawer Division)

LAS CRUCEZ, New Mexico, March 11 - A woman from Las Crucez, N.M. (pop. roughly 95,000) has been charged with three counts of aggravated battery against a household member, and a separate battery count, for allegedly stabbing her ex-husband after she looked through the call history of his cellular telephone.
   A March 7 Associated Press story declined to say what she discovered in in the phone. A cursory Google search - one never clicks past the first page, because one has better things to do, such as napping - shows that other news outlets, including Las Crucez television stations, are as lazy as this reporter: all ran the AP story, so details about the telephone's contents remain sketchy all across the World Wide Web (www.).
   The story is full of suggestive details, however, each of which seems a perfect springboard for a novel (or, these days, a Twitter posting).
   "According to police," the AP writes,"[the woman] and her 29-year-old ex-husband were at her home late Thursday when she became upset after looking through his cell phone's history."
   (This information appeared in the second graf - that's newspeak for paragraph - of the AP story. The AP did not write "[the woman]." They wrote "Shaw," indicating that this was the woman's Christian name. But the first graf does not give her full name. This is an oversight of monumental proportions, and points to the appalling state of American journalism. If you can't trust the AP, whom can you trust?)
   Why, one wonders, were they at her home? They are, for goodness sake, ex-husband and -wife. One would think it prudent, not to say preferable, to maintain a good deal of distance between oneself and a second party under those circumstances. Alas, those enjoying, or who have enjoyed, "a union between a man and a woman" have their own ways, some of which are mysterious in the extreme. 
   The AP quotes detectives as saying that the mysteriously one-named Shaw, who was mysteriously enjoying (enduring?) the company of her ex-husband, became enraged at the mysteriously un-reported, and deeply mysterious, contents of her husband's portable telephone. Not altogether mysteriously, she drew a knife "and started swinging at her husband, striking him at least three times."
   His injuries were, according to the AP, "not life-threatening." Perhaps if the couple had still been married, the woman would have tried harder to do serious damage to the man she had taken for better or worse, in sickness and health, till death did them part. After all, if death did them part, the contents of his carry-around telephone would be moot, now wouldn't they?
   Plainly, heterosexuals take seriously the institution of marriage. Even after disrespecting the sacred institution by bailing on it, they are so drawn to the one to whom they pledged their troth that, when the loved one disobeys, they feel compelled to stab the shit out of them. 
   Gays and lesbians waiting for the blessed day when same-gender marriage rights become available should take note.

The Joys of Holy Matrimony (End of Days Division)

PATERSON, New Jersey, March 11 - A fifty-one-year-old New Jersey man is preparing to stand trial five times, one for each of the daughters he allegedly raped repeatedly, three of whom he impregnated and who gave birth to a total of six children, the Associated Press reported today.
   According to the man's wife, he was sure the world would soon end, and therefore thought it prudent to create a "pure bloodline" by impregnating his daughters. Prosecutors in Passaic County told the AP that one of the daughters was raped as late as 2002, shortly before the wife left the man and took the children with her. The daughter was in her early teens at the time.
   In testimony, one daughter, the AP reports, "described experiencing and witnessing beatings administered with wooden boards and steel-toed boots." She added that the man would punish even the most trivial transgressions by withholding food.
   The children were home-schooled and not allowed to socialize with peers.
   The man faces twenty-seven charges, including many related to sex crimes. His first trial is scheduled for April. More sordid details - there's only so much one can write without becoming dispirited - are in the AP story.
   This situation calls into question the notion, promulgated by conservative social critics and lawmakers, that for marriage to remain "a union between a man and a woman" is better for the children. Plainly, some heterosexual men see "family" as their own personal cult. 
   This point should be noted by gays and lesbians eager to enter the sacred institution of matrimony. 
           --30--


NOTE (March 12, 2010): This story is updated here.

The Joys of Holy Matrimony (Statistical Evidence Division)

   A report recently released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that, in America, marriages last longer than non-marriage cohabitative relationships, a phrase this reporter just made up.
   According to a March 2 Reuters report, the CDC study suggests that seventy-eight percent of marriages last five years or more. Less than thirty percent of what the CDC, unlike this reporter, calls "cohabiting unions" (making it sound like the unions themselves are cohabiting, something that hasn't happened since the days of Jimmy Hoffa) last the same amount of time. 
   The study was based on a nationally representative sample, whatever that is, of 12,571 American men and women. 

   Normally, one prefers to go to the source - to dig beyond the Associated Press or Reuters - in order to flesh out blog items. But the CDC report, available here, runs forty-six pages, forty-five-and-one-half pages longer than that for which one has any patience a 'tall. 
   However, gays and lesbians enthused about marrying might want to study the report. They'll find nothing about themselves in it, of course. But they will amass interesting conversational fodder for when they dine with their heterosexual counterparts and try to convince them that gay people are just like they are, and therefore should be allowed to marry. 
   This, of course, is a canard. Gay people are irrevocably different from straight people by virtue of being well-groomed, well-spoken and well-mannered, and of having a capacity for sexual relations the deviance of which is quite rightly thought to be a danger to the safety of the women and the horses. 
    

The Joys of Holy Matrimony (If I Had a Hammer Division)

   On May 4, 2007, Amy Teresa Ricks, of Salt Lake City, obviously a good and caring wife, drove her husband, Joel, to her mother's condominium, where she told him she had a "surprise" for him. 

   She walked him down to the basement and blindfolded him. Then she repeatedly bashed him on the head with a hammer. 

   Joel Ricks, who suffered minor injuries, later told sheriff's deputies that sleeping bags had been spread on the floor where Amy guided him to stand. Nearby, a nine-inch kitchen knife was encased inside a plastic bag. 
   This suggests that: a.) after conking out her husband, Amy Ricks planned to disembowel him (perhaps hoping to fetch a premium black market price for his internal organs?); or, b.) the Rickses enjoyed a fetish-heavy intimate life about which neither of them enlightened investigators. It seems sad that we will never know. 
   Amy Ricks, who is thirty-seven, was charged Tuesday with second-degree felony attempted murder and a third-degree felony aggravated assault, according to a report Wednesday in the Salt Lake Tribune. Ms. Ricks' attorneys plan to say she is a victim of Battered Spouse Syndrome. At first glance, that seems a bit like the pot calling the kettle black. But relationships are mysterious; only the people within them know the truth. The Tribune notes that Rickses, though separated, are still legally wedded.   

   This makes plain that some heterosexuals so revere the institution of marriage that they feel compelled to respect it by staying with the spouse who, mere years before, they did their best to kill or maim.  
   Gays and lesbians eager to marry should take note. 
   

Republican Lawmaker: Male-Male Anal Sex = Penile "Wriggling"

   Anti-gay politicians and "preachers" are always good for a laugh. Back in the Eighties, when gay men were dying of AIDS by the bucketsful, gay-loathing (and attitude-manipulating) lawmakers and religionists talked about AIDS being "God's wrath" against gays.
   One of them was the "preacher" Pat Robertson, who, judging from his comments over the years, appears a beacon of sane humanitarian compassion. 

   On January 13 of this year, on his television show "The 700 Club," Robertson thoughtfully characterized the Haiti earthquake as God's payback for the country having made "a pact with the devil" by booting out the French so very many years ago. He said the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks were God's way of expressing dismay at America's moral decay, proof of which existed in the presence of, among other things, feminists, gays and lesbians, and the ACLU. 
   Hurricane Katrina? That, Robertson said, was God showing anger at anti-abortion laws. (Hello?) And, in a 1992 Iowa fundraising letter, Robertson intelligently wrote: "The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians," all of which sounds, upon close examination, just dandy. 
   (There is a link, below, to a page full of kooky Robertson quotes.)
   Anyway, back in the day, the fringe religionists cleverly - and, of course, wrongly - linked homosexuality with bestiality, child-molestation, incest, and other enchantments of the irrevocably damaged. They also released videos asserting that gay sex involved, among other sensual delights, "feces play."  

   Indeed, over time it began to appear that the fringe religionists - and their cohorts in lawmaking-ville - had a peculiar fascination with all things anal, which makes sense: isn't it the co-mingling of fear and fetishism that makes sex hot?

   Now, just when one sighs about the good old days being so crazy and funny and, alas, long gone, comes New Hampshire State Rep. Nancy Elliott (left) to stoke the fires of butt-sex-related terror. (Huffington Post story and YouTube clip links are below.) Discussing HB 1590, a bill to repeal same-sex marriage laws, at a recent legislative executive session, Elliott had this to say about the ways in which gay sex is "not normal":
   "We're talking about taking the penis of one man and putting it in the rectum of another man and wriggling it around in excrement. And you know, I have to think, I'm not sure, would I allow that to be done to me? All of us gathered here - would you let that happen to you? Is that normal?"
   She went on: "They are now teaching it in the public school. They are showing our fifth graders how they can actually perform this kind of sex.... They are saying this is something that you, a fifth grader, may want to try."
   You know, I have to think, I'm not sure, but is Ms. Elliott, well, gum-gnashing, toenail-pulling, face-clawing, batshit crazy? Yeah: like a fox. It's best to take the helicopter view of this blather: not to assess whether it makes sense (wriggling it around in excrement?), but to understand why it's propagated. 
   That much is simple. Conservative lawmakers such as Ms. Elliott - who, incidentally, in their oddball convictions remain well outside of what are now mainstream American same-sex-marriage attitudes - use graphic images of gay sex to play on some voters' squeamishness not only with gay sex, but with sex itself. (One wonders what Ms. Elliott has to say about heterosexual couples who enjoy, er, wriggling the man's penis around in the woman's excrement-lined, uh, anal...pipe? Tube? Duct?) 
     These lawmakers and religionists do so because they cannot muster a decent argument against why two people of the same gender should be joined in holy matrimony, excrement-based-penis-wriggling-oriented or not.
     In the end it is best, I think, simply to enjoy the Ms. Elliotts of the world, as they are a dying breed. Not only are they doing us the favor of hilariously echoing bigots who, in most cases, are long-gone, but they are also returning us, for a brief and shining moment, to a time of asymmetrical haircuts, parachute pants, John Hughes movies and Cure singles.
     The Eighties are back!
     (And less bigoted than ever.)

The Huffingpost story is here
The YouTube video clip is here  
A fun link to Pat Robertson Krazy Kwotes is here